Qualitative study of home soundscapes with eight people aged 51 to 87 living alone in suburban Brisbane, Australia. Data came from soundwalks through each home, sound recordings, diaries and interviews.
Eight peopleThree men and five women aged 51 to 87, each living alone.
SoundwalksEach participant walked a researcher through the sounds of the home, or did the walk alone where privacy required it.
Recordings and diariesParticipants kept a sound recorder and a diary until a second visit a week later.
Interviews and analysisSoundwalk and diary data shaped the interviews. Accounts of sounds were analysed for the common-sense reasoning behind them.
BWhat the study found
Hearing other peoplehow participants described household sounds
•Participants described everyday household sounds as nothing special, yet still judged them.Participants heard sounds as signs that life was normal, or as something to worry about or not.
•All eight participants described other people as the source of sounds around them.Sounds ranged from children in a complex to people coming and going. Participants treated these sounds as adorning the home.
•Many participants first told a sound as a small story about someone's activity.Only then did participants restate it as the physical sound, as in hearing the neighbours showering, then the shower.
Rhythmsknowledge that showed when routines changed
•Participants knew the rhythms of nearby sounds, which showed most when a rhythm broke.Rhythms included radio programs, clock chimes and neighbours' routines. A clock failing to chime or neighbours falling silent drew comment.
The methodwhat listening on purpose did
•Asking participants to record and walk through sounds made them reflective listeners.Participants who usually tuned sounds out could then explain them. The paper likens this to a breaching experiment, which surfaces what people take for granted.
•The paper does not claim other people shape every home's soundscape.The finding held for these participants, who lived in urban areas close to other dwellings.
CKey takeaway
Soundwalks suggest that even people living alone hear their home's sounds as traces of other people. Because sparse sounds invite social storytelling, phatic technology can add new sounds and rhythms of connection.
Made for this site with AI assistance from the verified research brief. It is not the paper's own figure.
Abstract
The importance of the domestic soundscape as a context for technological interventions has received little attention in HCI research. In this paper, we discuss how an ethnomethodological soundwalk method facilitated design principles for a phatic technology probe for seniors living alone. Taking soundscape concepts as a starting point, we suggest that the soundwalk works much like a breaching experiment, changing the participant’s role in engaging with their soundscape from reactive automatic agent to proactive reflective agent. This enables participants to reveal their own systematic orderliness when accounting for everyday sounds. We find that sounds are accounted for in terms of people placed in narratives. As such, we argue that phatic technologies use new sounds and rhythms to augment the domestic soundscape to take advantage of people’s abilities to create social narratives from limited cues.
Research brief
By Hanif Baharin, Sean Rintel, and Stephen Viller.
Takeaway: Even for people living alone, a home's soundscape can sound peopled. Everyday sounds are heard as neighbours' routines and woven into stories. Because people build such stories from limited cues, connection-building ('phatic') technologies can add sparse new sounds and rhythms that invite the same storytelling.
Why this matters
What was known
The home's soundscape has been little studied as a site for technology design. Earlier soundscape work in HCI found sounds carry special meanings for the people who hear them. The importance of the domestic soundscape as a context for technological interventions has received little attention in human-computer interaction (HCI) research.(§1, p. 1)
What this paper adds
We recast the soundwalk (a guided listening tour of one's home) as a breaching experiment in Garfinkel's sense. It becomes a way of making people's taken-for-granted understanding of everyday sound visible and sayable, without having to disrupt anything. our contribution lies in the suggestion that soundscape studies may be designed as a form of breaching experiment(§5, p. 7)
Who it matters to
HCI researchers studying everyday sound, and designers of phatic audio and telecare technologies for seniors living alone. representing a remote person using audio phatic technology could be applied alongside telecare monitoring technologies(§5, pp. 7–8)
Research questions
How do people account for their experience of the domestic soundscape, and how do they achieve a common-sense understanding of it?
What design principles for a phatic audio technology for seniors living alone can a soundwalk method yield?
Method and data
Design
Ethnomethodologically informed domestic soundscape study using researcher-guided and (for privacy reasons, for some participants) self-guided soundwalks, sound recording, diaries and interviews.
Setting
Participants' own homes in suburban Brisbane, Australia.
Participants / data
Eight participants (three males and five females) aged 51 to 87, all living alone.
Duration
Soundwalk at a first home visit or a visit a week later, when the diary and sound recorder were collected.
Analysis
Soundwalk and diary data informed interview guides. Accounts of sounds were analysed ethnomethodologically.
Findings
Mundane, but still judged. The people we studied were aged 51 to 87 and lived alone in suburban Brisbane. They described their everyday household sounds as nothing special, yet still evaluated them, for example as signs that life was normal or as something to worry about or not. #
“The evaluative nature of even baseline 'nothing special' responses is, we argue, a fundamental feature of the accountability of the soundscape.”
Living alone, hearing others. Although they lived alone, all participants described other people as the source of sounds around them, from children in a complex to people coming and going, and treated those sounds as adorning their home. #
“And you don't sort of see these people in the complex very much, so you've got the sound of the children, which is quite nice.”
People first, sound second. Many participants first described a sound as a small story about someone's activity, and only then restated it as the physical sound itself, as when one woman talked about her neighbours showering: #
“when the windows are open I might hear my neighbours showering. Or I hear the shower.”
Rhythms noticed when they break. Participants knew the rhythms of sounds around them, such as radio programmes, clock chimes and neighbours' routines. This knowledge showed most clearly when a rhythm changed, such as a clock failing to chime or neighbours falling silent. #
“I haven't heard a sound from them the whole weekend. They may have been away.”
Listening on purpose changes listeners. Asking participants to record sounds and walk us through their homes turned them from listeners who tune sounds out automatically into reflective listeners who could explain what they heard. It worked much as a breaching experiment does, surfacing taken-for-granted understanding. #
“And if you hadn't asked me to listen, I probably wouldn't have even heard the hum of the traffic”
Questions this paper answers
Do people who live alone hear other people at home?
Yes. Eight people aged 51 to 87 living alone in suburban Brisbane each traced nearby sounds to other people, telling small stories about neighbours' routines before naming the sound. Sounds they called nothing special were still evaluated, as reassurance that life was normal or cause for concern. (See §3.1, p. 3; §3.2, pp. 3–4; §3.2, pp. 3–4.)
How can researchers get people to talk about sounds they normally ignore?
Ask them to record sounds and walk through their home describing them (a soundwalk). With eight people living alone in Brisbane, this acted like a breaching experiment. They became reflective listeners who could explain sounds they otherwise tuned out. (See §4, p. 7.)
Why do people notice when familiar sounds change?
Because they learn the rhythms of sounds tied to routines, such as radio programmes, clock chimes and neighbours' comings and goings, without consciously attending to them. That knowledge surfaces when a rhythm breaks, for example when a clock stops chiming or neighbours go quiet. People then tell stories about why. (See §3.3, p. 5.)
Contributions and implications
New sounds and rhythms can be designed into the home soundscape to draw on people's skill at building social narratives from limited cues. We suggest that new sounds and new rhythms may be designed to augment the domestic soundscape to take advantage of these skills.(§5, pp. 7–8)
Researchers can design activities that shift participants from reactive automatic agents to other roles, such as proactive reflective agents, to elicit understandings of sound.
Augmenting a shared soundscape raises design questions of sonic privacy and etiquette. it also opens up design questions regarding sonic privacy and etiquette in a shared soundscape created by technology(§5, pp. 7–8)
In our related research, the SonicAir phatic telecare probe connected the homes of two people living alone and gave both an ambient sense of social connection. they were able to develop an ambient sense of social connection from which both took comfort(§5, pp. 7–8)
Limitations
The finding that other people shape the soundscape is not claimed to be universal. It held for participants in urban areas close to other dwellings. We are not claiming that this is universal, but this is at least true for all of our participants who live in urban areas(§5, p. 7)
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Concepts
Phatic audio technologies
Our design focus, interventions in the domestic soundscape that encourage social narratives: lean audio signalling "awareness systems [that] contribute to a feeling of human connectedness"(§1, p. 1)
Soundwalk
Schafer's listening exercise, which we adapt so that: the researcher guides the participants' attention to the sounds in their environment by encouraging discussion of routines undertaken in each area of the environment(§2, p. 2)
Breaching experiment
Garfinkel's device for making shared common-sense understandings visible. Here the soundwalk plays this role without needing disruption. "aids to a sluggish imagination" to make transparent the shared common sense understandings or accounts of everyday actions(§4, p. 6)
Soundscape rhythm
Following Oleksik and colleagues. Rhythms often formed around time-heralding sounds such as radio programmes, clock chimes and church bells: we found participants contextualising sounds as chronological aggregates: rhythms(§3.3, pp. 4–5)
How to cite
Hanif Baharin, Sean Rintel, and Stephen Viller. 2013. Rhythms of the Domestic Soundscape: Ethnomethodological Soundwalks for Phatic Technology Design. INTERACT 2013, Part IV, LNCS 8120, 463-470. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40498-6_36
This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text. Page numbers refer to this PDF.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{baharin2013rhythms,
author = {Baharin, Hanif and Rintel, Sean and Viller, Stephen},
title = {Rhythms of the Domestic Soundscape: Ethnomethodological Soundwalks for Phatic Technology Design},
booktitle = {INTERACT 2013, Part IV, LNCS 8120},
year = {2013},
month = {September},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40498-6_36},
pages = {463-470},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-40498-6_36},
}